In this article, I address the enduring American interest in the manipulation and eradication of the need for human sleep through the powers of science. In particular, I focus on military research regarding the possible reduction of necessary sleep times as well as historical attempts to modify and maximize the scheduling of warfare; these military efforts are juxtaposed to the efforts of sports professionals who have attempted to test the limits of human sleep, either for scientific concerns or for that of victory. These various scientific pursuits are compared to science fictional representations of the eradication of human sleep, or its significant modification. I argue that it is not solely the actual realization of sleep’s modification that impacts dominant understandings of sleep, but rather that the fantasies of science’s powers reconfigure conceptions of the human and its limitations.
